


it begins with a red rose

by crossingwinter



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-05
Updated: 2014-10-05
Packaged: 2018-02-20 00:01:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2407727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossingwinter/pseuds/crossingwinter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grey’s always been proud, and that, she thinks, is why he doesn’t say what’s on his mind. Sex has become a point of proof, she thinks, him proving to her that he can still <em>have</em> sex, that he doesn’t need a penis to get her off. Because at least they can still have sex—even if he doesn’t have a penis anymore—and god forbid either one of them bring up the conversation they had had senior year when they’d gotten tipsy and talked about having kids and had even come up with names for them and everything, because what if he still thought about that? What if he wants kids? What if he want kids, and can never have them?</p>
            </blockquote>





	it begins with a red rose

_It begins with a red rose.  A red rose that he has clamped lightly between his teeth as he prances around the quad dressed as a matador, waving a red cape. He looks silly—he is very thin and very tall and the cape extenuates that—but he doesn’t carry himself with the same sense of embarrassment that everyone else seems to have while hunting down their Screw Dates, and Missandei grins to herself as she makes the sort of noise that she imagines that bulls would make and charges him down._

_Grey was Dany’s idea for a screw date, she can see it immediately. If Irri had chosen, he would have had long hair and probably some sort of tattoos, but Dany’s always understood her taste better than Irri does.  Missandei has always liked boys who were skinnier than she is, and who look as though they’d float away in the wind, but even as they hug and he offers her the red cape to wear back to his dorm room (it’s cold, and he needs at least to put on a shirt before they go to the dance—and they should probably take a few shots as well) she can see well defined muscles on his arms and gets to fully appreciate just how buff his abs are._

_Dany chose well.  He’s a sociology major and he’s in one of the nice frats, and he likes DC better than Marvel, but thinks that DC needs to get its fucking act together and make a damn_ Wonder Woman _movie. That’s later though—after the dance, when they’re sitting on the grass and staring up at the stars and giggling and Missandei wonders if maybe this could work, because she remembers his hands on her hips—only during one dance—and the way he danced sort of like a drunk flamingo just to make her laugh._

_He was a goofy one, Grey was.  With a big dopey smile and she didn’t want to let herself believe that hopeful feeling in her heart that this boy, this man was it._

-

Grey Worm arrives home on a Tuesday afternoon and lets himself into the apartment, dropping his duffle bag in the living room before going to lie down on the bed. It smells like Missandei, and he finds some of her hair stuck to a pillow and wants to grin to himself, but he can’t really.

He’s glad she’s not home—not yet.  She hadn’t been able to meet him at the train, something about one of her students having a bit of a fit and needing someone to sit with her while they waited for her mother. Missandei’s texts had been miserable.  ‘I want to meet you :(’ she had written.  ‘It’s fine,’ he had replied, ‘I know how to get from the train to the apartment on my own, Missy.’ 

The room is very clean, he noticed when he sits back up.  She had picked up for him, he can tell.  She is a bit of a slob, and he slides himself over so that he can look under the bed and sure enough he finds piles of shoes and clothes, shoved out of sight so that he can feel some sense of neatness when he comes home. He reaches a hand down and rubs his fingers along the lining of one of her spring jackets. It’s silkier than he expects, like her skin like her—

He lets go of the lining and scoots away, twisting so that he isn’t pressing his face against the blankets and sheets that smell like Missandei but rather staring up at the ceiling. He closes his eyes and waits for her.

-

Things are different now—of course they are.  How can they not be.  Not just because it’s—yeah.  But also because he’s surly. 

Grey doesn’t like talking about Afghanistan.  Missandei tries to get him to talk about it, but she can’t get much out of him. Sometimes, he’ll tell her about things he saw—

“Little girls coming home from school—you would have loved the sight of it,” he’d say grinning into his beer.  Or, “I swear, flying over those fields you can tell which ones are now used to grow poppies.” But about combat and explosions, he says little and less, and she sometimes wants to scream, because she wants to _know_ , she wants him to _tell_ her because how the hell can she ask the question that hangs over their heads every night as they go to sleep—how did it happen?  Was the sort of thing that caused it normal? 

Grey is gone—the Grey she’d loved in college, the Grey who had promised to love her forever, and who had sent her letters written by hand with dried flower petals in them, or pieces of fabric he bought for her to make into little doll dresses. The jokey, goofy Grey is gone, replaced by some surly stranger who thought that the fact that he didn’t have a penis anymore meant that there was something inherently different about him.

-

_The first time they have sex it’s raining outside. They are curled up in Grey’s bed, watching Star Wars together and laughing at how obviously unaware the people who made it were about living in deserts because none of the people on Tatooine actually wore any kind of head coverings.  It begins with his hands rubbing her arms through her long-sleeved t-shirt (she always gets cold, especially on rainy days) and then her nuzzling her nose into his armpit._

_“Are you even watching?” he asks her, only half annoyed as his fingers continue to trail up and down her arm._

_She isn’t—not even a little.  She is smelling him—the mixture of his peppermint deodorant mixed in with the scent of Grey and she kisses the top of his rib cage._

_At what point he actually puts his laptop away, she couldn’t tell. But the feel of his arms, his lips, his legs, his whole entire self sending warmth deep into her stomach as he presses her into the mattress.  She feels the rub of his cock, stiff in his jeans, against her through her underpants, as she had how many times before now—but this time is different. This time she isn’t afraid, and he isn’t afraid, and for a moment they break their kisses to look into one another’s eyes and he climbs off her and purposefully digs a foil out of his roommate’s dresser._

_She doesn’t say a word as he pushes into her, though she feels a sting and a stretch that is so very different from tampons—warmer, sturdier. She shifts her hips underneath him and the sting diminishes slightly and they begin to rock against each other, their breath mingling with the sounds of the mattress springs and the falling rain._

_-_

“You ok?” she asks him. She asks him every day when she gets home, lightly, gently, often with a kiss on the cheek and a small smile.

“Just fine,” he replies, forcing a smile but not forcing an explanation.  Because he’s not fine.  But the ways in which he is not fine do not need enumerating every single day, and they don’t need enumerating to her.  She’d worry even more than she already does, and he can’t bring that on her, he can’t do that to her.

“How was your day?” he asks her, following her like a puppy into the kitchen where she pours herself a cup of orange juice and then leans against the counter, drinking it down. On days when she launches into explanations—“My Head Teacher is a moron and doesn’t understand how organization works,” he knows that she is happy and well. On days when she says, “Fine,” he knows she’s worried about him.

-

He’s always been proud, Grey.  Always. When they were seniors and he was dressed in a full Superman costume for Halloween and some asshole driving past in a car made fun of him at the same time as catcalling her, he would holler back that they should look out because Batman was driving the streets tonight.  Missandei had giggled into him and leaned in for a kiss.

It had taken him a lot to convince her to wear a Wonder Woman costume.  The shorts were far too short, and the top…she didn’t like strapless tops and she _really_ didn’t like strapless tops where she felt her boobs might fall out. It was the look of bright excitement in his eyes—that they’d be matching, a pair—that convinced her. And walking down the street next to him, she walked tall, she walked proud, because she _was_ proud.  She wanted people to look at them and say, “wow—did you see those two superheroes? They’re smokin’ hot.”

Grey’s always been proud, and that, she thinks, is why he doesn’t say what’s on his mind. Sex has become a point of proof, she thinks, him proving to her that he can still _have_ sex, that he doesn’t need a penis to get her off. Because at least they can still have sex—even if he doesn’t have a penis anymore—and god forbid either one of them bring up the conversation they had had senior year when they’d gotten tipsy and talked about having kids and had even come up with names for them and everything, because what if he still thought about that? What if he wants kids? What if he want kids, and can never have them?  What if adoption makes him feel inadequate?  And so he’s just doing everything he can to make her hold on, until she finds someone else who can give her kids—as if that _matters_ because it’s _him_ she wants most. But it colors everything. Every orgasm he licks into her, she feels like it’s just one more in a tally for him—how many can he give her to make her stay?

-

_Part of what he loves about her is how she is at home. Not like—“I love you because you’re home”—no, she’s a little different from that, though that element is there too.  She’s…she’s potential. But not potential that you’re not sure about.  More like…a seed? Or something?  Where you know it’ll grow into something else, and you know what it’ll grow into, and what it will grow into is phenomenal?_

_He’s bad at putting words to it._

_But that’s ok.  Because he knows that when they’re done with school, things will be ok, because things are always ok with Missandei.  And he knows that when they’re settled, they’ll get married, and have kids, and she’ll want them as much as he does, because they’ll want to share that part of themselves with each other._

_That’s what he means when he thinks the word potential. The knowledge that they’re going to be in each other’s lives, that they’re going to shape each other’s future, and somehow, it’s comforting and not scary at all.  Because losing her is a scarier concept than running away from some future where they have a house with a white picket fence and three children who all want to be Batman for Halloween._

-

So she takes matters into her own hands.  Because she can’t bear it—can’t bear that their conversations have become stinted words through the silence, can’t bear that sex is a chore, can’t bear that everything is so broken while seeming all right. 

She goes on the internet and begins to research, but it’s evident fairly quickly that there aren’t very many support groups for people like Grey.  That makes her angry and sad and confused because if she’s looking and can’t find anything, surely that means he’s looking and can’t find anything either.

So instead, she opens up a private browser and searches “my boyfriend doesn’t like having his penis touched.  how can I get him off?” and without even hitting enter, she realizes exactly what can happen and begins laughing.

-

_Four nights before he left for Afghanistan, he and his buddies get absolutely shitfaced.  It is a “guys night out”—no women, no anything.  Just the five of them dicking around for hours on end. Grey can’t remember anything that took place after midnight, and he wakes up at 6pm quite convinced that he hadn’t gotten home until at least noon.  Missandei smirks at him when he stumbles out of their bedroom and into the living room, his head throbbing worse than when he’d accidentally hit it against Daenerys’ new dragon sculpture._

_“You have fun?”_

_“Ow.”_

_She gets up and kisses him lightly and with a closed mouth. “I’ll make eggs if you want them.”_

_He just shakes his head and goes into the bathroom to vomit. She rubs his neck while he does and all he can think about is how much he’s going to miss her hands on his skin, her lips on the back of his neck, the way she knows—without him saying anything—exactly what he needs._

-

He gets a phone call from Jorah, and he ignores it.  He doesn’t want to talk to Jorah—doesn’t want to talk to _any_ of them.  Because sure, they’re his brothers in arms, his brothers for life and all that, but he doesn’t feel like dragging all that shit up right now.

So instead he turns off the ringer on his phone and puts it face down on the desk and lets his eyes drift over to the bookshelf.  Missy’s got all sorts of children’s books there, ones she’s had to read for work, or just ones she’s kept with her through the years, but on the bottom left-hand shelf, he sees thinner, more papery bindings and he almost smiles when he gets up and pulls loose one of his old _Justice League_ comics.

When Missy gets home that night, he’s smiling, and calling her his Hawk Girl, which gets him a raised eyebrow because she’s always been Wonder Woman, which only makes him more pleased with himself as he helps her chop onions for dinner.

_-_

The first time she fucks him with a strap on, he comes quickly and cries.  She cleans the dildo before sliding up the bed and pulling him against her so that he’s crying into her chest, great blubbering wet tears that she hadn’t expected at all.  His skin is hot to her touch, and he’s sweating and when she runs her hands down his back, he kisses the flesh between her breasts.

She knows how to handle a crying child—she’s been doing it for years—but Grey…Grey never cries. Not ever.  She’s never seen him even close to it. He pushes everything down inside him to a part that she’s not even sure he knows he has and makes it go away.

But this was never going to go away—this change to him.  He can’t hide from it, would never be able to.  Changing underwear, going to the bathroom—everything’s different now. And, of course—sex.

“I—” he tries after a few moments of heavy breathing.  “I didn’t think…I didn’t think that would ever happen again,” he mumbles, and he’s shy, suddenly.  She feels her heart dancing in her chest as she sinks down slightly on the bed so that they are face to face.  He tries looking away, his eyes shifting down to the pillow, or up to the ceiling, anywhere but at her.

“Well, it’s a good thing that I can get creative sometimes,” she teases, pressing a finger into his nose. And he’s grinning, laughing, and kissing her, holding her so tightly she wonders if he might accidentally break her ribs.

“You’ve always been good at that,” he whispers.  “Better at it than me—that’s for damn sure.  I love you, you know.”

Now she feels like she might start crying.  So she kisses him instead, feeling the way her breath trembles when their tongues meet and feeling the way that his breath trembles too.

-

Things are different after that—better.  Not perfect, of course, but different.  Grey is happier now, and easier.  Sex stops feeling like a chore, and he even smiles over dinner.  They go for walks and make fun of weird looking dogs, and he kisses her against trees and it’s like being new in love again.

They even have friends over sometimes now—she cooks while Grey picks up after her mess and vacuums, and when Dany arrives, Grey is charming, not surly, and it feels like old times.

-

_“What do you think of living together?” he asks. He tries to sound casual—he really does.  Because he doesn’t want her to know how devastated he’ll be if she says no._

_“Sounds good,” she says, not even looking up from her computer. She’s doing prep-reading for her new job, about the developmental age of three-year-olds and he goes over, pretending to read it over her shoulder, but really just wanting to feel her skin under his chin and her hair against his face.  She’s got it in braids now, twisty ones that bounce when she walks and that knock against his face when they have sex.   He takes one in his hand and begins fiddling with it._

_“What did we say about my hair,” she asks gently, still not looking up from her computer._

_He kisses her cheek and lets go of the braid, and she lets out an amused huff.  “You’re just a great big three-year-old, aren’t you?” she teases._

_“Perhaps—but I have interests that other three-year-olds might not have,” he says._

_“What, my tits?”_

_“I was going to say Batman, but those too.”_

_He loves her for that alone—for not taking him seriously, but taking him more seriously than anyone else ever has._

-

She is and has been, since the moment she appeared with bullhorns poking out of the top of her hair and that ridiculous charging noise, the most important thing in his life. The gentle quiet she shares with him, the secret smiles that means she knows that he knows what she’s thinking (and he always does—because god, if she can read him like a book, he can also read her like a book), the way that she always has a solution for everything, and a way to fix all problems even while saying she doesn’t and that she needs him to make her think straight—all of them are things that are more addictive than the opium produced in the fields they’d once hoped to liberate for crops.

And fuck, it is hard. Sometimes he wants to explain to her just how hard it is—coming home and seeing her normal, seeing her without memories of gunfire that rip apart her dreams, or even hearing the sounds of choppers in ceiling fans.  He is jealous of her peace, he needs her peace, because her peace is the most holy thing that has happened to him in a long time.  It reminds him of who he had been in college, when he’d chosen a sociology major without even knowing what sociology was, and signing up for the marines because he hadn’t known what else to do with himself and he’d come from a military family, and she’d come from a military family so she knew what that lifestyle was and didn’t look at him judgmentally that he was throwing away a good college education to do something that so many of his peers thought was beneath them.  

Sometimes he wants to marry her.  Well, most of the time, he wants to marry her, but then he remembers that marriage for her isn’t just a husband who would love her and a nice house, but kids and it makes his stomach twist because he’d be fine—more than fine—he was pretty sure at least—and raising a kid who wasn’t his if it meant raising one with Missandei, but how the hell could he tell her that?  Because he couldn’t.  That was one of those things that you couldn’t say to someone.  “I love you.  And want to marry you.  And it’s fine that I can’t give you a child, we can adopt, or hell—even in vitro, I don’t care. But you, me, marriage, and kids(?)” No.  He can’t put that on her. He can’t.  Because he’d never forget the light in her eyes when she’d drunkenly told him she wanted a little boy who looked just like his father and a little girl who looked just like her—and he couldn’t give her that anymore.  The little boy and little girl couldn’t look like him, even if they could look like her, and he knew that that was asking her to put…put that dream aside for him. And he wasn’t even sure he was worth it.  He wishes he knew how to bring it up so that she smiled that secret smile of hers, but he doesn’t and he can’t.

-

Something is on his mind again, she can tell.  She can always tell.  He gets this tension in his jaw when he does and his eyes never seem to settle in one place.

Once what feels like forever ago, he could just ask him and he’d tell her.  But that isn’t now.  She wonders sometime if it got shocked out of him after his injury. She can’t tell. So instead, she curls up next to him and rests her head in his lap and he runs his hands over her arms again, and she feels like a cat who is not quite content but purrs anyway because it feels good.

What is he thinking? And would he ever tell her?

She knows he will, one day, when he’s ready.  But she wishes he were always ready—the way he had been before.

-

_The day she drops him off for service, she comes home and cries and cries and cries.  She cries harder than she ever has in her life—harder than when they’d brought a flag home for her brother, harder than when her mother had passed, harder than when she’d been three and learned she was terrified of clowns.  She’s scared and alone and usually when she’s either scared or alone, she calls up Grey and he comes home and wraps her in his arms and tells her stories of his day, but always in such a way that it turns into a story in which he is Batman and she laughs and they kiss and she slowly rolls him over so that she’s on top and they have slow, laughing sex._

_Thinking about that makes her cry harder, because even if she called him, things would only be worse because it would make him feel bad to know that she’s missing him already and he’s only been gone for two hours and what will happen when he’s gone for weeks and months?  What if he doesn’t come home?  What if him going to Afghanistan is like Moss going to Baghdad and she never sees him again and there’s dogtags and a flag that she keeps in a wooden box over the mantle because that’s all that will be left of him?_

_Later, Dany takes her out for dinner, and they eat silently. Dany tries to distract her, and Missandei is grateful for that at least, but she isn’t there. Her mind is full of Grey in his greens and the look on his face when he’d thrown his dufflebag over his shoulder and turned to go through security._

_-_

Dany has a new boyfriend named Daario, and Grey doesn’t like him.  He’s got long blue hair and a gold tooth, and calls her “Baby,” which is just a little more than Grey thinks is acceptable.  But when he gets up to go to the bathroom, Dany giggles something quietly to Missandei, who smirks back, and later that night, when his legs are up over her shoulders and she’s running lube in and out of his ass, she tells him that Daario has introduced Dany to anal sex and that she enjoys it and Grey feels a little hypocritical because if he is enjoying anal sex—and god knows he is, he thinks as Missandei pushes her strap-on into him, kissing his lips and holding his face in her hands—he really can’t judge that.  It’s not fair.

But all the same, Daario rubs him the wrong way.  Maybe it’s because Jorah stiffens whenever Dany mentions him when the four of them are out for lunch, or maybe it’s the way that he notices how Daario sometimes just stares openly at Missy’s ass (no—that’s _definitely_ part of it) but Daario just…doesn’t fit.

Except Dany seems to love him.  Or at least really like screwing him…

And he doesn’t know who he’s being disloyal to for his opinions: Dany, who introduced him to Missy, or Jorah, who got him through Afghanistan.

-

_“He makes Dany uncomfortable, Grey.”_

_“Look—he’s a nice guy.  Real nice.”_

_“I know.  I don’t disagree.  Just…can we have him over at different times from Dany, please?  He just…he creeps on her a little, ok?”_

_“Creeps on her?” Grey sputters, laughing at the very idea. Jorah is married. Jorah is twice Dany’s age. “He just wants to get to know her. What’s so bad about that?”_

_Missy heaves a sigh.  “Please?”_

_“Fine.  I mean, it’s no big deal.  But he’s my friend, Missy.  We’re going to be in the same platoon.  And I’m not going to start trouble with him.”_

_“I wouldn’t ask you to,” Missandei smiles and turns back to her book.  Grey almost rolls his eyes, but doesn’t.  He knows better than to do that, and there’s also a small part of him that knows she wouldn’t bring it up if she didn’t have good reason.  And as good a friend as he was to Dany, Missandei was closer._

_-_

He finds a job, and Missandei is ecstatic.  She knows he needed the time off, that getting over trauma and recentering was important, but him getting a job—it’s a _good_ job too—a good fit.  He’s working at a women’s prison, teaching classes in civics.  It’s hard, she knows that, but he comes home every day with a smile on his face—even if it’s a weary smile.  He’s giving back, he’s fighting, he’s working to make the system better, he’s going where he’s needed, even if it’s not necessarily what people think needs to happen.

“My Batman,” she whispers to him when they’re lying in bed, and she sees him grin out of the corner of her eye.

“I don’t think Batman ever wanted to go in and teach the prisoners of Gotham,” Grey says.

“No, but he would have understood the necessity,” she rolls onto her side and watches him. “He’d commend your service. And, let’s be real, it’s a good secret identity for him; catch them, then help them reform in prison instead of just letting them sit and stew and get so fucked over that they don’t stand a chance at rehabilitation into a normal life afterwards.”

Grey kisses her and it’s deep and slow and makes her heart beat violently in her chest.

-

_She is so sure it isn’t going to work—so sure. Because how can it work? Wouldn’t she lose balance? How would he be able to breathe? There was just so much to go wrong.  But Grey laughs when she tells him those things, and just says that they’ll have to try, and if something goes bad they’ll switch positions._

_She locks the door of her dorm-room (a single—finally. She’s wanted one for ages, but somehow has been sent to the double every year since freshman year) because even if no one would come in, they still might come in and it would just be so—obvious and she had to be sure._

_They kiss, they touch, they caress, they help one another out of their clothes and when his fingers slide into her, and then out once again, she knows it’s just his way of asking.  And she takes a deep breath and scoots up, straddling his face, resting her hands on the headboard._

_Her first thought is that it’s chilly without him to warm her—and that makes his tongue on her slit even warmer.  His hands are on her thighs and he slowly, gently, pulls her weight down so that she’s not just hovering over him in a squat, she’s kneeling and there is next to no space between her and his tongue and oh—this is strange, but his hands are on her hips and he won’t let her fall down, and as he licks familiar patterns onto her clit, she wishes that his hands didn’t have to hold her up, because she wants them on her breasts.  So she grabs them herself, gently twisting her nipples and closing her eyes because it’s easier to pretend they are his hands and not hers if her eyes are closed and she begins to feel the familiar sensation of the universe in her stomach and her legs are trembling and her nipples are sending more warmth down to her clit while he sucks and licks and slips his tongue into her vagina and back up to her clit, sucking the whole nub into his lips and…_

_-_

She often wishes he wouldn’t be nervous.  She knows he is—nervous that she’ll leave him, that she’ll suddenly realize he doesn’t have a penis anymore and that she wants a penis and just drop him.  As if she could.  She is far too in love with him for that—and she knew he knew that too.  But he is still scared.

She’s wanted to marry him for years now—she’d first started thinking about it once they’d been dating for a year, and in her family, if you were dating for a year, you were for sure getting married.  The fact that she hasn’t yet makes people back home talk—made them wonder why. And it wasn’t just that she wanted to shut them up—there was some tiny part of her that wanted him to ask because she was nervous—just like him.  And maybe it would calm both of them down if they got married.

-

Sometimes he kicks himself for not proposing to her before he went off to Afghanistan. Other times, he is glad. No matter what, coming home would have been even more complicated if he had, because there would have been no way of avoiding the conversation he was now too cowardly to bring up. _You can’t have my kids, Missy.  I can’t do that to you.  I can’t. Even if you love me. You…you have to understand I won’t make you…if you…_

Because god he wants her, would never stop wanting her.  But at the same time…people grow and change and he’d never be sure— _never_ , he knew that, no matter what he told himself when he was trying to reason with himself—that a child that they adopted, or that she gave birth to through a sperm bank would actually feel like it was _theirs_.

-

“So, you and Missandei going to use that shot then?” They’re driving to the movies—just him and Jorah. He’s glad of it. Dany and Daario wanted to see something really grotesque and Missandei wasn’t feeling well.  She’d caught some bug from her students, or something, which left him and Jorah and the new flick about Vietnam that he’d wanted to see, but really wanted to see with someone who knew the army.

“Come again?” he asks.

They’re at a stop light. And he’s glad of that, but doesn’t realize it until Jorah says, “That shot you put on ice. At the sperm bank. Before we left.”

Grey’s vision goes blurry for a moment and he thinks he’s having a fit or something, but then it clears and the light turns green and he keeps on driving, very carefully.

“When did we do that?” he asks, lightly.

“You don’t remember?” Jorah laughs, and Grey shakes his head.  “That ‘last night’ we did a few nights before heading off to Afghanistan.  When we got blitzed and went to a strip club and then donated to a sperm bank in case we died and our ladies wanted our babies.”

Grey’s heart is pounding in his chest because no—he doesn’t remember that—he doesn’t at all because he was black-out drunk for the first time since he’d graduated from college but if Jorah remembers then maybe it’s true and—

But he can’t just _tell_ her that.  He can’t just say “hey it’s ok, we can have _my_ baby—if you want,” because that was presumptuous on so many levels and…

“I hadn’t thought of it, to be honest,” he lies smoothly.  “Have you still got the phone number for the place?”

“Sure,” says Jorah, pulling out his phone and sending Grey a quick email with the info.

Grey hardly pays attention to the movie.  And when he drops Jorah off at home afterwards, he drives to Starbucks, buys a triple shot espresso, and calls from the parking lot because he can’t be home when he finds out more.

-

_She finds it hard to masturbate while he’s gone. She’s never been one to masturbate much—she thinks it’s because her mom was a Sunday School teacher. But even while he’s gone and she thinks about him constantly, her fingers between her legs just aren’t enough—not when she’s aching for more than his touch._

_She counts the minutes between their skype dates, and cherishes even the sound of his breathing on the phone while they’re thinking of more things to say to one another.  The longer he’s gone, the more she wants him home because the further away he is, the less their apartment feels like home._

_-_

He’s drunk when she gets home—full on drunk.  It makes her nervous.  Grey is never drunk. He doesn’t drink. He smokes—a habit he picked up in the Marines, but he says he hasn’t had a drink since that night out with the boys before he left for Afghanistan.

But he’s definitely drunk now—his eyes are glassy, his cheeks are red, his head is lolling slightly.

“Grey?”

“Missy!” He hiccups, then makes a face as if trying to catch the air he just expelled.

“Grey, what’s going on?”

“You’re so beautiful, Missy—so beautiful, and perfect.  I love you so very much.”

“I love you too, Grey,” she says.

“I love you more than I could ever love anything—you know that, right?”

“I do.  And I feel the same.”

“Good.” He blinks and his eyelids droop. “Good good.”  And moments later he is asleep and Missandei is so confused that she doesn’t know what to do with herself.

-

His face is slack the next day, and he can’t really look at her.

“Do you want to tell me what caused all that?” she asks him over breakfast as he toys with his eggs. He’s frowning and nervous and sheepish and Missandei doesn’t know what to make of it at all.  He’s never like this—not ever.  Not her brave Batman Grey.  “I’m not mad or anything,” she adds. “No—just worried. You don’t drink often and…and I don’t know what to make of coming home and finding you drunk.”

Grey takes a bite of eggs then looks up at her and she sees pain on his face—pain and fear and sadness and hope all mixed up into one confusing expression. 

“Please tell me—you’re scaring me,” she whispers.

“So—“ he begins, but then his voice catches in his throat.  “So—yeah.  I—You…you remember when I was really fucking drunk before I left?” She nods.  It had been the first thing she thought of when she found him on the floor with an open bottle of scotch.  “So.  I was blackout.  Like gone completely.  And it turns out that Jorah had this idea of us all going to a sperm bank and donating in case we all died overseas.”

“Oh,” Missandei says. She doesn’t know what else to say. What else do you say to that?

“Yeah.  So. I didn’t remember that.  And Jorah reminded me.  And I called them up and—yeah I don’t want to—I don’t know how to—” he pauses, taking a deep breath, then she sees that boyish grin spread across his face—a grin that doesn’t reach his eyes, which were huge and terrified, but the grin was there, and she focused on that as he said, “So, if you want my Batman babies at any point…that’s an option that’s somehow not off the table.”

She’s blinking back tears and up from the table and she sees panic spread across his face because he’s scared she’s running away, but she’s not—she’s running to him and throwing her arms around him and crying because she’s happy—not because his sperm is there and they can have a child—though that does make her happy—but because he wants it, he wants her, he wants them and she’s kissing him and he’s kissing her back with surprised gusto and for the first time in ages, everything is completely perfect.

-

A year later, she holds them in her arms—two perfect children, one boy and one girl, who look up at her with Grey’s wide brown eyes.  He wants to name the boy Batman.  And when Missandei says no, he tries Bruce, and then Wayne—which she also refuses. They settle on Moss in the end, after her brother, and Danielle for the girl, because Dany introduced them in the first place.  And when Grey brings Missandei home from the hospital, there are red roses everywhere—long-stemmed and perfect and smelling like Grey.


End file.
